​I am a Ph.D. candidate in the Laboratory for Child Development at Johns Hopkins University, working with Drs. Lisa Feigenson and Justin Halberda. My research centers around the question how the primary cognitive systems that we are born with and are shared among different species enable us to acquire the complicated symbolic knowledge that no other animals enjoy. More specifically: What role does our intuitive sense of number play in our symbolic mathematical abilities? How does the developing concept of object interact with the acquisition of corresponding language expressions?